Forgotten Seeds
by chris the cynic
Summary: Ten prisoners awaken in a failing cryo-prison on the moon to find that the world they know is gone. (Eventual Kigo.)
1. Chapter 1: Awakening

This is inspired by, with permission, LJ58's "Fallen Heroes". Even though there are already a couple of different characters, it won't start to really diverge for a few chapters. Right now the differences are mostly style and details.

XXXXX

Shego woke up and, as she usually did, tried to go back to sleep.

Then she realized three things:  
>1 The last thing she remembered was Kimmie injecting her with something<br>2 She was completely naked,  
>3 She was vertical instead of horizontal.<p>

Upon opening her eyes she found that she seemed to be in a glass tube, and beyond it she saw a plain metal hallway that was too generic to place. She pushed on the glass in front of her and found that it gave easily. It moved out of her way lightly on hinges she hadn't noticed were there.

When she stepped free she found that things were very, very wrong.

She was too light. Much too light. Her first thought was to wonder what Kim had done to her but a quick look showed that she hadn't been starved and there was no way that _that_ could account for how light she was anyway.

Almost all of her weight was gone. Walking was … odd. She fell on her face more than once before she got the hang of it.

In spite of what people thought, Shego did pay attention and she did study. She knew she was too light to be on the surface of any planet. There were, however, multiple moons she might be on. Just what the hell had Kimmie done after injecting her?

Examining her surroundings was very, very unpleasant.

The glass tube was the front of the contraption she'd been in, the back was a near vertical "bed" built into a strange metal machine. Next to it was a similar device, this one closed and frost evident on the surface. Inside of it was a very still DNAmy, recognizable in spite of being somewhat obscured by the frost build-up on the glass.

It was what was next to _that_ that was the problem. Another "bed" whose occupant was dead. And another one just like it next to it. And another, and another, and another. The chamber Shego was in was very large and had multiple levels, it was full of the devices each of which had someone in it, and it seemed that _everyone_ was dead.

Everyone save herself and Amy.

Shego found an unlocked supply closet, it didn't contain much of interest but it did, mercifully, contain clothing-plain white clothing that she deemed a fashion disaster-but clothing she put on none the less.

She found a computer and was able to look up a map of the facility.

The devices were called "cryo beds" and it seemed that most of them had gone offline. She didn't bother finding out how many there were, she didn't want to know. She instead found out how many other survivors there were: nine.

Hers was the only one that had opened.

The computer gave brief descriptions of each:

Name: AMY HALL  
>Alias: DNAmy<br>Reason for Suspension: Deemed a threat to global security  
>Notes: Rouge geneticist<br>Authorization for Suspension: Dr. Elizabeth Director

Shego laughed at 'Rouge' instead of 'Rogue'.

Name: DREW LIPSKY  
>Alias: Doctor Drakken<br>Reason for Suspension: Multiple attempts at world domination  
>-Deemed a threat to global security<br>Notes: Brilliant inventor; inept in all other areas  
>Authorization for Suspension: Dr. Elizabeth Director<p>

Again Shego got a giggle out of the notes.

Name: SARAH ANDERSON  
>Alias: Surge<br>Reason for Suspension: Member of Sonique's organization.  
>Notes: Able psychically manipulate electronics<br>Authorization for Suspension: Dr. Elizabeth Director

This gave Shego pause. She quickly cross-referenced "Reason for Suspension" with dates. There were too many records to read them all and Shego didn't want to read about any of the dead people anyway. She didn't want to know their names.

Regardless it seemed that between Drakken's "Suspension" in 2013 and Surge's in 2018 the reason necessary had gone from "threat to global security" to simply being a lackey. Digging deeper into Surge's file than the surface summary mentioned something called the Sander's Act.

Quick glances at other records seemed to show that it was invoked every time someone had been put into cryo-statis for no defensible reason.

Shego didn't know what the Sander's Act was, or why it mattered, but she was guessing it wasn't good. She returned to looking at records of survivors.

Name: HORATIO SYSKA  
>Alias: None<br>Reason for Suspension: Espionage  
>Notes: It has never been determined how he accomplishes his spying.<br>-Suspected mutant  
>Authorization for Suspension: Dr. Elizabeth Director<p>

Name: NOLAN ROBERTS  
>Alias: Hawk<br>Reason for Suspension: Sheltering Sander's Act fugitives  
>Notes: Able to form viable wings at will<br>Authorization for Suspension: Dr. Elizabeth Director

Name: RYAN SMITH  
>Alias: None<br>Reason for Suspension: Deemed a threat to global security  
>Notes: Prefers targeting civilian populations with explosives.<br>Authorization for Suspension: Dr Elizabeth Director

That was the first of the incarcerations Shego agreed with. "If the 'Notes' section is accurate," she mentally amended.

Name: WILLIAM TAYLOR  
>Alias: Blok<br>-Bill  
>Reason for Suspension: Gang activity.<br>Notes: Can turn into "stone"  
>Authorization for Suspension: Dr. Elizabeth Director<p>

Name: HENRY SANDERS  
>Alias: Janus<br>Reason for suspension: Impersonating World Leader  
>Notes: Limited shape shifting ability<br>Authorization for suspension: Dr. Elizabeth Director

The last survivor seemed to be separated from the others, when Shego found out who it was she gasped.

Name: KIMBERLY POSSIBLE  
>Alias: Kim, KP<br>Reason for Suspension: Deemed a threat to global security  
>Notes: Former Hero<br>-Inventor  
>-Nascent villain<br>-High risk of attempted rescue; removed from gen-pop  
>-Designed cryogenic bed; hers can only be opened manually as a precaution<br>Authorization for Suspension: Dr. Elizabeth Director

Shego attempted to access Kim's file but found it highly encrypted, far beyond her own skill to crack.

Six hours later she had discovered several distressing things.

She wasn't all that surprised by the lack of guards. If people had been left to die when their cryo bed went offline then she figured this wasn't really a prison, it was a method of execution that allowed those who implemented it to tell themselves they weren't actually executing people. She was surprised by the state of repair.

The facility was immaculate, but low on power. Heavy doors wouldn't open, light ones did so lethargically. The security systems to prevent escape, the very things that should be stopping her from having free reign, were entirely useless. State of the art lasers couldn't fire and could only manage to twitch when they should have tracked her every move. Force fields didn't operate. Half of the computers running the place had recently fried when their cooling system lost power. The heat was gone but the smell lingered. The other half didn't look like they'd last long.

From what she could access on the computer terminals that were working, she found that she couldn't open the cryo beds. Hers had opened as a safety precaution when it ran out of power. The ones that hadn't opened when they lost power, more than ten thousand of them, had been prevented from opening by some override system that had been running on the now fried computer banks.

There was no food.

The water that there was she had to collect from anti-condensation chambers designed to keep the electronics from getting wet by removing moisture from the air.

The air itself wasn't going to last long, at least it wouldn't if she wanted to get out. Environmental systems were keeping the CO2 levels safe, but the oxygen wasn't being replenished. Something, the computer wasn't sure what, had used up most of it long before Shego had woken up. What there was had been collected into the chambers with living prisoners. If that air was shared with the places she needed to use to reach the nearest exit the O2 would be too thin to breathe for long.

She had no idea where she was. While a map of the interior was available and easy to access, information on the outside was in a computer that had powered down. It was, fortunately, not on one of the ones that had _melted_, but there wasn't enough power to turn it back on. If she tried to boot it up the power drain would short the system and knock out all the computers.

When looking into this she happened to notice the date displayed on the computer she was using: 6/22/2529. Checking various other things confirmed that it wasn't a mistake. The last time a human being had interacted with the computers of the prison was almost five hundred years earlier. The last entries were fairly routine and then centuries of nothing but automated log updates.

They'd been abandoned. All of the prisoners, thousands of them, had simply been abandoned. They'd been left to die when the power ran out without so much as a note saying why.

No guard had set foot in the facility for centuries. Apart from the "centuries" part she had assumed as much, but somehow it finally hit home for her. No one had been there to witness the passing of most of her fellow prisoners. No one had cared enough to save them. No one was there now.

She was completely alone.

There was one person she could wake. Kim's cryo bed had been set to manual. Shego was pacing back and forth outside of it when the intercom tried to announce something. It did very little other than crackle and spurt, but it was enough to send Shego running to a computer terminal.

XXXXX

The last thing Amy Hall remembered was trying to force a ninja school into releasing her beloved Monty.

Now she was naked in some sort of tube.

She got out of it and found white clothing laid out for her. She was putting it on when a door lurched open.

"Oh god; I wish I hadn't seen that," Shego said as she backed out of the room she'd just entered.

"Shego?"

"Welcome to the prison of the future," Shego said in a sarcastic imitation of a tour guide. "No guards, thinning air, way more nudity than you'd ever want, and … oh yeah, almost all of the inmates are dead."

"What's going on?"

"Finish dressing, then we have to meet Dr. D."

"I'm finished," Amy said. "Now, what's going on?"

"Apparently Kimmie designed cryogenic stasis technology, then she was interred here herself."

"Where is here?"

"Here is where Global Justice sticks everyone they don't like," Shego said. "Stuck," she amended. "They stuck us here, then left."

"Left?"

"A long time ago."

"How long?" Amy asked.

"Five hundred years give or take. My last memory is from 2010. Yours?"

"Early 2011."

"They nabbed Drakken in 2013. Surge in 2018. I didn't recognize the rest of the survivors' names, didn't check the dates either."

"You said they had Possible."

"She's got her own room. Apparently she's a 'nascent villain'."

"Always thought she had it in her."

"I have my doubts," Shego said. "Anyway, let's find Drakken before he blows something up." Shego led the way.

XXXXX

Drakken had put on the white clothing that had been laid out in front of his cryo bed.

He'd also managed to stop his utter panic that had commenced when he noticed that he was surrounded by dead bodies.

He recognized the technology immediately, it was Kim Possible's tech. Supposedly abandoned shortly before the retired hero's untimely demise, it had obviously been taken and mass produced.

He had little doubt as to who was responsible. Global Justice stepped up their efforts after Possible died. In truth they'd been cracking down since her retirement and his short lived pardon. Possible's death just accelerated things. The five years between her retirement and death didn't see anything like the downward spiral he witnessed in the two years after her death.

When he was finally captured it was almost a relief. That meant he wouldn't be killed. Sure, GJ never abandoned the taser as their primary weapon, but there had been more than a few 'accidents'. Accidents that were never subject to inquiry, explanation, or reprimand.

Now. looking at what was so obviously Possible's stolen technology, he was confused. The cryo beds were a marvel of technology, one that he totally understood GJ's desire to steal, and they should never have failed. The ones around his had obviously failed.

When Possible had turned from famous hero to reclusive inventor he followed her career with interest. When Shego disappeared he made the mistake of trying to force the reason out of Possible. When he heard the news of her cryo beds he had a feeling that that was what had become of Shego. No prison could hold her, but if she had been asleep the whole time...

But Possible's technology was better than this. She had failsafes on her failsafes. There was no way that she'd make the death chambers that he was now surrounded by.

He had to find a computer terminal, he was missing something.

XXXXX

Shego and Amy found Drakken in front of a computer screen, studying.

He noticed them enter the room and said, "Ah, Shego," absently.

"Doc," Shego said, "do you realize that-"

"Five hundred twenty-six years have passed while we've been in cryostasis and we're being held in a failing Global Justice facility on the moon? Yes."

"Do you know which moon?" Amy asked him.

"The moon," he said. "Earth's moon."

"So it could be worse," Shego said.

"It could also be better," Drakken said. "I see no records of food being stored anywhere within this facility and most of it isn't functioning regardless. We're trapped here."

"I was hoping you could come up with some kind of a plan to get us out," Shego said.

XXXXX

Drakken was surprised at Shego's lack of abuse. He did notice that his long rest seemed to have calmed himself, perhaps the same had happened to her. He hoped that was it, because if things were really so hopeless that Shego had lost her sarcasm he knew there was a very real chance they were going to die.

Only parts of the schematics were open to him, not enough to form a plan, and of what he could see there wasn't enough power to accomplish anything.

The intercom system tried to say something and he saw a flashing on the monitor. Two more cryo beds would open because of imminent power loss.

Drakken told Shego and Amy and the three headed toward hold seven, where the two waking prisoners were located.

XXXXX

Sarah woke up and decided that if they were going to treat her like a criminal regardless of what she did she'd damn well start acting like one. Her attempts to put "Surge" behind her had obviously failed, so she would be Surge.

She'd take vengeance on those sanctimonious jerks who-

And that was when she fell -agonizingly slowly- on her face, learning the hard way that attempting to move in the lunar gravity they way one would on earth simply did not work.

She bounced, something she hadn't expected, and thanked whatever gods may be for the railing that stopped her from tumbling into empty air. As she slowly got on her feet she realized that the room she was in was four stories tall and she was on the third story of it.

She clung to the railing for fear of falling, still not quite realizing why she was having trouble moving around.

When she turned around she was so surprised she collapsed to the metal walkway again.

There were bodies. Seemingly endless bodies. All dead.

Horatio pushed open his cryo bed, smelled the stale air, and closed his eyes for a moment.

Then he picked up the white clothes laid out in front of his cry bed, carefully unfolded them, and put them on.

He made his way to a ladder that gave access to all four levels of the room her was in, climbed down from his place on level four to level three, and walked to Sarah, still huddled in shock.

He picked up the clothes that had been left in front of her cryo bed and handed them to her. Then he returned to the ladder and climbed to the ground level.

XXXXX

Drakken, Shego, and Amy waited expectantly for the door to hold seven to open enough to walk through. When it didn't do so quickly Shego helped the door along with brute force.

They found two people dressed in the clothes Shego had laid out for them when she had surveyed the facility alone earlier.

"Surge," Shego said nodding to the pink-haired woman. "Horatio, I presume," she said to the man with wild brown hair. The man nodded.

"We're in a deteriorating Global Justice facility on the moon," Drakken said. "We don't have access to the full systems and we don't have enough power to use most of the systems we do have access to. Can either of you help?"

Horatio shook his head.

Surge gestured to the bodies in the cryo beds and asked, "What about them?"

"There's nothing we can do for them," Drakken said.

"Right now we need to think about the people who are still alive," Amy told Surge.

"There are ten of us, we're," Shego gestured to the entire group, "the first five wake up."

"Why are we alive if the others died?" Surge asked.

"The cryo bed's original designer-" Shego started

"Kim Possible," Drakken added.

"The original designer," Shego said, obviously annoyed, "made fail safes so that a power failure would never injure, much less kill, the occupant. The ones who actually used them decided they'd rather see us die. Their override system was clunky at best and apparently required some computers that recently failed. Now we're waking up as the power runs out."

"It's running out fast," Drakken said. "All of the survivors will be awake within 24 hours. We just have to hope that at least one of them can help us."

"Which brings us back to the original question," Amy said. "Is there anything you can do to help?"

"Well..." Surge said, "I could use my power to interface with the compu-"

"No!" Drakken and Shego shouted in unison.

"We've met," Surge sheepishly explained to a befuddled Amy.

"Though you were younger then," Shego said, "Have your powers improved?"

"I've been retired," Surge admitted. "I haven't had a lot of practice."

"So, what now?" Amy asked.

"We wait for the next batch to wake up," Drakken said.

"I hate waiting," Shego said.

XXXXX

Drakken had been able to predict that the prisoner in Holding Area Thirteen would be the next to awaken and so they'd been waiting there for Nolan Roberts to wake up. The five sat in a circle, all angled at least slightly away from Robert's cryo bed to give him some modesty when he woke up.

Shego and Amy knew the least about the state of the world, Drakken's knowledge only got them two years closer to understanding. Surge was able to share what happened all the way into 2018. Horatio never said a word.

XXXXX

Hawk blinked awake and found himself in some kind of glass tube. It wasn't the first time. The ability to spontaneously generate limbs was reason enough for people to want to poke and prod him. That those limbs were ones that no mammal had any right to have in the first place was even more. The fact that he was able to fly on the wings, and even able to carry other people, when the wings were too small to provide the necessary lift was just the icing on the cake.

More than once he'd escaped only because the people planning to vivisect him couldn't agree on who got first cut.

He'd never seen the ones who captured him this time, but he had a good guess. He'd finally annoyed the big dogs. There had been warning that Global Justice was on to him, but there was only so much he could do. Marcella's Free Zone was nearly impossible to locate and travel to Japan was restricted. Trapped within GJ allied countries there was simply no secure hiding place.

That hadn't even been the worst part. The worst part was that he was supposed to be a criminal, he was supposed to be as far from altruistic as possible, but he'd somehow found himself guardian of a growing flock of genetic outcasts.

Some had been subjected to the same kind of experimentation as him. Some had seen worse. Some were lucky in that they only lived in fear of it. He was their protector, their guardian, the one who promised, against every impulse, to keep them safe.

Even if he could find a way out for himself, they were not so easy to move in a hurry.

So he'd held back. He'd slowly gone in one direction leaving a trail of bread crumbs that was just a little too obvious to ignore but not conspicuous enough to be an obvious false trail. Meanwhile his charges had fled in a different direction as fast as they could without leaving a trail.

Sure enough someone caught up with him. The last thing he remembered was a pain in his back.

Surveying the room beyond the glass was … odd. It was an empty room. Not a lab like he expected. The occupants were wearing matching white clothes, which could indicate a "science" team, but rather than examining him or readouts they were sitting in a circle talking to each other.

He tested the glass in front of him and was surprised to find it freely gave.

XXXXX

At the sound of the cryo bed opening Amy said, "Mind the low gravity," without turning.

"Put on the clothes and tell us when you're dressed," Shego added.

Soon they explained the situation to him and it turned out he had nothing new to contribute to an escape attempt.

Sprouting wings and flying, while impressive, wouldn't help them much while trapped indoors.

For the first time Shego raised the possibility of waking Kim Possible.

XXXXX

Smith woke up and immediately started a threat assessment. Glass in front of him, a protective railing beyond that. No matter how clean it was he recognized a prison when he saw one.

The glass was different, it implied the small chamber he occupied was a cryo bed. A cell. That might be a good thing. He was awake and there were no armed guards. Probably a glitch.

The benefit of a cryo prison was that it didn't need guards. Sleeping convicts couldn't attempt to escape. No prison violence, no riots, no escape attempts. Keep the location a secret and there would be no outsiders trying to break the incarcerated out. That meant a skeleton crew at most. With the exception of moving prisoners, prisons like this didn't actually _need_ anyone working at them. The guards were purely there for public relations reasons. It made the tax payers feel safer knowing there was someone with a gun around their con-sicles.

When there wasn't a press visit, which itself was very rare considering that cryo prisons were uniformly _secret_ prisons, the actual guard posted at the facility would be almost non-existent.

Automated defenses, on the other hand, could be expected in droves.

Still, he knew what to expect.

Testing the weight of his arms and legs he knew exactly where he was. Luna-1. The first and largest cryo-prison, Global Justice's favorite place to stick the undesirables of the world, and never officially acknowledged to exist.

The handful of earthbound cryo-prisons had their locations kept secret, but Luna-1 had its entire existence firmly and repeatedly denied. There was never a press presence here. There was never a need to station guards for show.

There would probably be almost no one to stop him.

He pushed the glass in front of him and smiled as his cryo-bed opened. He was definitely right, some kind of glitch had set him free.

He was sure he could catch the guards off guard and be out of here in a hurry.

When he saw the white clothing neatly laid out in front of his cryo bed, his and no other in sight, he was forced to reevaluate everything.

XXXXX

The first thing Blok noticed was his mass. It was way too low. He was much more used to changes in mass than most people. In his stone form he weighed more than half a ton. In human form he weighed almost exactly two hundred pounds. Changing between the two forms repeatedly left him intimately familiar with what it felt like for his body to have a different mass.

What he wasn't used to was weighing _less_ than his human form. Much less.

He estimated he weighed about thirty pounds, give or take.

When he opened his eyes and saw his surroundings he had some idea of what was going on.

Years ago Kim Possible had reentered the public eye to propose the use of cryogenic technology in prisoner storage. He'd only paid enough attention to note that she wasn't returning to the hero business. Later that month she apparently died.

Over the next few years information came out implicating Global Justice in her demise. Then political hell broke loose when Ron Stoppable went public with information indicating that Global Justice had stolen Kim's cryo technology, built a secret lunar prison, and made her the first inmate.

The lunar prison was never located, which meant that rescue was impossible. It was beyond all jurisdictions so no national agency could bring Global Justice to task for what it did there. All that could be done was withdrawing from the UN and Global Justice's power.

Japan had done so before Stoppable even went public. In theory it should have meant nothing more than Global Justice no longer operating in Japan. In practice it looked like Global Justice was preparing for war with Japan, but that never came to pass.

Once there was proof more nations left the fold while Global Justice became closer and closer to the Dark UN Enforcers of the nightmares of people who thought in capital letters.

They cracked down on every country they still had a foothold in. Not that they hadn't been doing that before, but once the truth was out they did it openly. Before people disappeared without any proof as to who did it; after GJ started operating in broad daylight in the streets and didn't care who knew.

That's when he was nabbed.

The Lunar cryo prison had never been found.

Everyone assumed that it was where the disappeared people were sent.

It's where he must have been sent. It wasn't his mass that was off, it was gravity. He wasn't less massive, as he had originally assumed, he weighed less.

He phased into stone form and then felt silly. His transformation destroyed the cryobed, but the glass cover that served as the door had apparently been unlocked. He phased back into human form and surveyed his surroundings. A pile of white clothes was in front of his cryo tube and he heard movement above him.

He quickly got dressed. A few minutes after he'd finished a voice called out, "Ryan! Blok! Get down here; we have an escape to plan."

XXXXX

They'd decided to sleep, there was nothing else to do. It would be a while before new prisoners were released. Holding Area 23 would lose power next. Two new prisoners, but not for more than eight hours.

Hawk, having just woken up, didn't need sleep just then. Surge said she hadn't been awake long enough. Horatio curled up in a ball, covered his eyes with an arm, and seemed to go to sleep immediately.

By the time eight hours had passed they'd all been sleeping. Some simply because it was better than boredom.

That was why they were late for the opening of the cryo beds in Holding Area 23.

When they arrived Shego noted two figures in white on the upper levels. She shouted, "Ryan! Blok! Get down here; we have an escape to plan."

The one on the second level hurdled over the railing and transformed to a bulkier figure made of stone as he fell. The landing was too light for Shego's taste. A hard reminder that even if they found a way out of this prison they were still on the moon.

The stone creature, which looked like a caricature of a large man that had been carved out of granite, transformed back into a dark haired man in white clothes.

"Blok, at your service," he said.

Ryan Smith took longer to reach the ground floor.

"What's the situation?" he asked.

"This facility has been abandoned," Hawk said. "We're lucky that the fail safes finally kicked in otherwise we'd be like them," he gestured to all of the cryo beds in the room that didn't open.

Apparently Ryan and Blok hadn't looked back before. They both had a moment of shock, but Ryan's moment was much shorter.

"The functioning cryo beds are opening as the power failure becomes too much for them to keep running," Drakken said. "That power failure is also stopping us from moving the larger doors and providing annoyances left and right."

"Most of the still functioning computers are open to us," Surge said. "But some parts we haven't been able to get to because none of us are good enough hackers."

"The people who built this place didn't expect prisoners to be awake and accessing the computers." Amy said. "They were lazy with them, but not completely stupid. There's a chance that the parts they were afraid we might access are parts that would help us get out."

"We're on the moon," Nolan said.

"I know," Ryan snapped.

"I'd guessed as much," Blok added.

"And that pretty much covers it," Shego said. "Other than the fact that we've all been asleep around five hundred years."

That shocked Ryan and Blok.

Once it became clear that neither of them had much to contribute to an escape attempt Shego brought up Possible again.

"The same person who designed these cages," she gestured to the cryo beds, "Is a prisoner here too. Except her cryo bed will only open manually."

"Leave Possible to rot," Ryan said.

"She'd do just that," Shego spat back. "Not only can hers be opened manually, it can _only_ be opened manually. She'll end up like one of them," Shego gestured to the dead bodies who had never been released from their cryo beds, "if we do nothing."

"So what?" Ryan asked.

"That would be murder," Surge said. "We'd be no better than the ones who left us to die."

"I'm not in favor of leaving her to die," Hawk said, "but I'd rather wait on letting a hero loose in here. She was on GJ's side."

"And betrayed by that side," Blok said.

"Do you know what happened to her?" Amy asked.

"It doesn't matter," Ryan spat.

"What does matter," Shego said, "is that if she worked on the cryo beds she may have also worked on the prison itself. She might be able to get us out of here."

"It'll be another hour, two at most, before the last prisoner is freed," Drakken said. "Why don't we wait on decisions about Kim Possible until we see if he can help us?"

XXXXX

Henry knew where he was when he woke. After what he tried there was only one place they might send him. Luna-1. The 'secret' prison on the moon. It had never been located or officially admitted to, but everyone knew about it. In fact, it had become so famous that _whenever_ someone disappeared there would be whispers about Luna-1. Usually the whispers meant nothing, but in his case he must have been sent there.

What he didn't understand was _why_ he woke up. In spite of Luna-1 being a cryo prison, something that was never intended for life sentences, no one had ever returned from Luna-1.

Stranger still was the lack of guards. Henry had never been a physical threat to anyone, but it wasn't like Global Justice to leave _anyone_ without armed guards. Especially considering how much he had annoyed them.

Try to change the world, end up being turned into a popsicle.

That was the price of trying to be a hero, he decided. Pranks and small time crimes were much safer.

He cautiously pushed the cryo bed open. It was only when he saw the clothing laid out in front of it that he realized he was naked. He put it on and then turned back toward his prison.

XXXXX

"Oh my god!" came a shout from above the eight survivors.

"He's awake," Ryan said.

"He's awake," Shego repeated. Then she shouted in Henry's direction, "Get over here. We need to find out if you're useful."

XXXXX

Henry quickly confirmed what Shego had feared and suspected. He was no more help in escaping the dying Lunar prison than any of the others.

"That settles it," Shego said. "We have to wake Kimmie."

"I thought you said you couldn't-" Henry said.

"We couldn't open anyone else's," Shego said. "It seems that Global Justice never really understood the technology. They could duplicate it, but a lot of the programming was hardwired into the circuits themselves. They weren't able to isolate the parts they didn't like, and were always afraid that Kim had hidden a feature to save herself in it. They made sure that hers could only be opened manually."

"That doesn't change the fact that we should leave her to die," Ryan said, "or kill her ourselves."

"Ok," Shego said while green plasma erupted from her hands. "You don't get to talk anymore."

"Releasing her would be a risk," Amy said.

"Red is always a risk," Blok said, "But having her on our side would be something to behold."

"We're out of options," Hawk said. "We let her out."

"I'd like to see her save me instead of stop me for a change," Drakken said, quickly adding, "even if she was downright scary toward the end. If we want to live we have to let her out."

"I want to live," Surge said.

"Then let's let her out," Henry said.

XXXXX

Given that Kim's last memory was a taser in the back while Will Du and Elizabeth Director lectured her about how her taking the law into her own hands was a threat to the world while them doing the same was totally peachy she had a pretty good idea where she was.

What she didn't expect was who she saw.

Nine people all wearing white clothing. Shego, DNAmy, Drakken and Block she recognized. The five others not so much.

Shego opened her cryo bed and said, "Princess, you had better have a plan."

"What's the sitch?" Kim asked.

"Well first off you're naked. Put on clothes." Shego shoved a bundle of white clothes that matched her own into Kim's arms. The eight others turned away to give her a least a modicum of privacy. Shego simply stared.

"Do you mind?" Kim asked as she pulled on pants.

"Well I figure you saw me naked enough, now it's my turn."

"It's not like I had much of a choice," Kim snapped. "They were going to kill you if I didn't come up with another solution."

"And that makes everything better," Shego sneered.

"If it makes you happy, you're part of the reason I was locked up here." Kim said.

"She's decent," Shego announced. "How was I a part of it?"

"You, Amy, and Dementor were the stated reasons for locking me up."

"Dementor?"

"You and Amy were thrown in my lap by Ron who wanted to find a way to deal with you without killing you."

"How is what you did different from killing?

"Because I was going to let you out," Kim said. "You weren't frozen, just in a deep, deep sleep. I developed a way to have the equivalent of therapy going on and was hoping for rehabilitation."

"Mind control," Shego spat.

"No!" Kim shouted. "Why does everyone assume mind control? It's no more mind control than a court order to see a therapist."

"And Dementor?"

"He attacked one of my students. I lost my temper but his injuries shouldn't have been fatal."

"Shouldn't?"

"Instead of getting medical help he ran for eleven blocks. The stress made the injuries much worse and the police were more interested in stopping me than helping him. By the time anyone actually bothered to look for him they found that he'd decided hiding in a subway tunnel was better than getting help. That decision cost him his life."

"Damn," Shego said.

"While this is all very interesting," said woman with pink hair who Kim guessed to be a pacific islander in her twenties, "it doesn't really help us." She turned to Shego. "You said she could help. She doesn't look like much."

"Kimmie, meet Surge," Shego said. "You know Drakken and Amy-"

"And Blok," Kim interjected.

"Right, he mentioned something about knowing you," Shego said. "The others are Hawk," she gestured to a lean black man with short black hair, "Horatio," she gestured to a Caucasian with wild dark hair and, "Ryan," another Caucasian, this one with well groomed sandy blond hair, "and Henry," a wiry Hispanic man, his hair of uniform length-about four inches. "We're all that's left. Apparently Global Justice overrode your safety features, but couldn't figure out how to do it in the cryo beds themselves. When some of their computers crashed we started getting let out as the power died. The rest weren't so lucky."

"The rest?" Kim asked.

"This facility had well over ten thousand prisoners," Drakken said. "Then ten of us are all that remain."

"Ten … thousand?" Kim asked in shock.

"Ten," Hawk said. "Ten people who -right here, right now- need a way out. The power is dying, the air is stale. We have no information on what might be outside these walls. Some of the computers are dead, some offline, others have security we can't crack. Can you help us?"

"The power's failing?" Kim asked, confused.

Henry was reading the information displayed on her cryo bed. When he finished he said, "It's been five hundred eighteen years since you were captured."

"That can't be … I mean..." Kim sputtered.

"I'm afraid so sweetie," Amy told her.

"And the guards?" Kim asked.

"Haven't checked in in centuries," Shego said.

Kim walked to the nearest computer terminal. "Give me a minute," she said.


	2. Chapter 2: Stepping Out

"Well?" Surge asked impatiently.

Kim didn't look up from the console she was using, "The facility is bigger than anything I ever intended, but the basics haven't changed."

"So, can you get us out?" Ryan asked in a demanding tone.

"Yes."

"How?" Surge asked.

"Can you still generate plasma?" Kim asked Shego.

As a demonstration Shego lit her right hand. She also flipped Kim off.

"Perfect," Kim nodded. Then she moved away from the computer console and said, "Come here."

Kim knelt and pried a small panel off the wall. Inside was a very orderly, very incomprehensible, array of wires and devices.

"See that blue box," she pointed. When Shego touched it she said, "Yes, that's it. First I need you to slice that end of the main cable free."

Shego easily cut it with a glowing finger. Kim then tugged the slack out of some of the interior wires, and stripped the wires on the edge of the open panel. She rewired them and then stepped back.

"Now," she said to Shego. "Send as much energy as you can through the cable."

"And this accomplishes what?" Shego asked.

"Power; we need power," Kim said.

"I believe cooperation is in our best interest," Drakken said.

"Doctor Dimwit," Shego said. "I don't care what you believe or that you seem to have gotten a more cheerful disposition. _I've_ got a five hundred year old hangover like you wouldn't believe." Shego lit her hands regardless. They flared so brightly the others had to turn away.

Kim examined a monitor and said, "You're doing it, Shego. Just a few more ergs."

"Yay, me," Shego said flatly. "I'm still holding out for an explanation."

"We all are, Shego," Drakken said.

"Speak for yourself," Surge said. "I just want to make it out alive, I could care less if anyone explains how."

The chatter devolved into three shouting matches. Through it all Shego kept her plasma going.

Finally Kim said, "That should be enough."

After a few keystrokes, a door that had formerly been closed, a door that by now they all knew they had to get through if they were ever going to leave, suddenly beeped active.

"Finally," Ryan said, rushing for the door.

"Wait!" Kim shouted.

Ryan opened the door anyway, there was a flash of light and then he fell back into the room.

The most disconcerting thing wasn't the hole clean through his chest. It wasn't the smell of burnt flesh. It was his eyes. His still open, but very dead, eyes.

Shego pulled the body clear of the door. Drakken vomited. Then he closed Ryan's eyes.

Surge seemed to be trying to stop herself from hyperventillating.

Amy was just standing there in shock.

Hawk and Henry didn't seem to have processed what had happened yet.

Horatio closed the door.

Blok was the first to speak: "There was nothing you could do," he said to Kim.

"I could have-" Kim started.

"You tried to warn him," Blok said.

"I could have warned everyone beforehand," Kim said. "I was just so caught up in solving the problem that I didn't think... And now..."

"Nine people are still alive," Hawk said. "Focus on that. We have nine people who need a way out."

"He's right," Shego said. "The problem isn't solved yet."

Kim took a deep breath and then said, "Blok, you're up."

"What do you need?"

"Getting power back on has given us what we need to get out but it's also reactivated the security systems," Kim said.

"Obviously," Shego said.

"You're the only one that the security can't stop," Kim told Blok. "Through that door are more holding areas just like the ones you all came out of and at the end of those is a security room. You can shut down the security systems with the push of a button."

"I'm not good with electronics," Blok admitted.

"This will be simple. Press a button, nothing more," Kim said.

"Ok, _which_ button?"

"When you get to the end of the holding areas you'll be in a small room with a console that looks almost exactly like this." She gestured to the console she'd been using.

"That has a lot of buttons."

"None of them matter," Kim said. "The buttons that do matter will be here," Kim pointed to an empty spot above the keyboard. "There will be a blue one, a green one, a yellow one, and a red one. All you have to do is press the blue one."

"Just press the blue button?" Blok said uncertainly.

"It's just that simple," Kim said. "The hard part is getting to it. Any of the rest of us would probably die, you should be able to take any punishment the security system can dish out."

"Should?" Shego asked suspiciously.

"Should," Kim said. Then, turning her attention from everyone but Blok, added, "So don't take your time. It's a straight line, just keep on running through the holding areas and going through the doors at the ends until you find yourself in a room that isn't a holding area."

"And then hit the blue button?" Blok asked.

"Yes," Kim said.

Blok stood in front of the door, transformed to his stone form and said, "I'm ready."

Hawk hit the button to open the door while carefully avoiding putting himself in the path of the defenses in the next room.

Block disappeared through the door, which Hawk quickly closed behind him.

"What now?" Amy asked.

"Now we wait," Kim said, returning to her console.

"Princess, I've been out for a day and haven't eaten. I'm cranky, I'm pissed off, and I'm not in the mood to wait," Shego said.

"I'm happy you made it," Kim said.

"Yay," Shego said in a voice that indicated anything but joy.

"We can monitor his progress from here," Kim said, indicating the console. "He's making good time."

"In lunar gravity his stone form probably weighs about as much as the average human does on earth," Drakken said. "He's still got as much mass to move to fight inertia, but when it comes to gravity he's never had it so easy before."

"Fascinating," Shego said, again in a voice that indicated her feelings didn't match her words.

"Is he holding up?" Surge asked.

"Impossible to tell," Kim said, "but he's not slowing down."

"So how did they get you, Princess?" Shego asked.

"They stabbed me in the back," Kim said. "Literally and figuratively."

"I know the feeling," Shego said.

"I tried to give you a way out," Kim said. "You wouldn't take it."

"You're blaming this on me?" Shego shouted.

"No," Kim told her, looking down. "And I'm happy to see you again."

"And we wouldn't have gotten this far without you, Shego," Amy added.

"Hooray for me," Shego huffed.

"Let's remember we're all here together now," Drakken suggested.

"What did they do to him?" Shego asked.

"What?" Kim responded, confused.

"Since when is Dr. D all for making nice with Kim Possible?" Shego asked.

Kim returned to her console. She quickly pulled up Drakken's file, read it over, and said, "Nothing."

Shego just gave her a look.

"Well, nothing they didn't do to the rest of us," Kim said. "It looks like they had some ham handed attempts at mind control but the cryo beds hardwired programming stopped any of them from working. He just got the equivalent of therapy sessions."

"Five hundred years of them," Hawk said.

"Well they don't seem to have affected the rest of us much," Kim said.

"You do know that I'm standing here while you talk about me, right?" Drakken asked.

"Sorry, Drakken," Kim said.

"Actually I find it fascinating," Drakken said, "and I do confess that I care much less about the people who laughed at me at university."

"Yay, therapy," Shego said with much sarcasm.

There was a beep on the console.

"The security system should be off," Kim said, then she looked around for something to throw into the next room to trip the motion sensors.

Shego realized what Kim was doing and casually cut a piece of metal from the wall with a plasma encased finger.

Kim opened the door and Shego tossed it in. Nothing happened.

"So..." Surge said.

"Dr. D, why don't you go in there and check?" Shego said.

"Not funny, Shego," Kim said. Then she walked into the room herself. Nothing happened. "It's safe."

The eight of them made their way through the holding areas, trying not to look at the cry beds and their deceased occupants, until they reached Blok.

"Good work," Kim said.

"It was nothing," Blok said.

"How long until we're free?" Surge asked.

"Now is when we find out," Kim said. Approaching the console. "This is a guard station so we have more control from here."

After a few silent moments she showed the others a map of the lunar surface.

"We're here," Kim pointed to one of two structures on the map. "There's not much here. Cryo beds, a few storage closets, and a tapped out power plant. We need to get here," she pointed at another point on the map.

"That's a long way through a vacuum," Hawk said.

"It's the only way," Kim said. "This facility is just a prison, that one is an actual base. A base for people who would travel back to earth."

"So... transportation?" Surge asked.

"Hopefully, but we have to get there first," Kim said. The map zoomed in to show just the prison, "This is a warehouse of all the possessions they took from prisoners," she pointed at one room back the way they had come, "we'll stop there first."

"Kimmie, that door doesn't open," Shego said. "I don't _think_ it's locked; it just doesn't open."

"It will now that it has power," Kim responded. Shego shrugged. Kim continued, "Once we've got our stuff back, we'll head out," she pointed to an exit in the section none had been in yet. "There are space suits here," she pointed at a storage locker. "If we're lucky there will be a vehicle."

"And if we're not?" Surge asked, unable to keep the fear from her voice.

"If not then we'll have to walk."

"It's over two miles to the other facility," Hawk said.

"There's no other choice," Kim said. "Unless you want to wait here and die of hypoxia we need to reach the other facility."

"You always were a ray of sunshine," Shego said flatly.

The group headed back the way they had come. Someone gasped as they passed Ryan's body, but no one, not even the one who had done it, was sure who.

The door to the "Personal Effects Vault" was made of thick and heavy metal. Drakken shuddered to think what it must have cost to move it to the moon. Shego looked ruefully at melted sections where she'd tried to force her way through earlier, before she decided to conserve her plasma.

Kim just smiled.

It was Horatio who tapped in the code to open the door.

xxxxx

The vault again drove home how many had been left to die on Luna-1. It seemed to stretch on forever. Nothing but numbered boxes on shelves.

"Dehumanizing, isn't it?" Shego said.

"What?" Blok asked.

"They couldn't even be bothered to use our names," Shego said. "Just … cell numbers." She pulled a box off the shelf and opened it. "This is me. Zero-Zero-One-A. That's all I was to them. A serial number."

"I'm used to being a specimen number," Hawk said.

"Things got a lot worse after you guys left the scene," Henry added. "In the end we were worth less than nothing."

"That explains why they'd rather see us die than be released," Shego said as she rummaged through the box.

When everyone started to look for their own belongings, Kim said, "You don't have to limit yourselves to just your things. No one else is going to be using this stuff."

"I daresay most of them would appreciate their things being used to help those who opposed putting them into this death trap," Drakken said.

Kim collapsed.

Shego was the first to her side, "You ok?" she asked while helping the young woman up. Soon everyone was around her.

Kim mumbled something too softly for it to be heard.

"What was that, Red?" Blok asked.

"It was never supposed to be a death trap!" Kim shouted. Then she started sobbing. "It was supposed to be a more humane solution than current prisons. No abuse, no gangs, no violence. Everyone kept safe and the only side effect would be people working out their issues in their sleep." The sobbing turned to dry heaves. "Everyone was supposed to win."

"Kim," Shego said, a hard edge in her voice, "You didn't do this. Cyclops did. She overrode _your_ fail safes to kill all those people. None of this is on you." Shego paused for a moment. "If you give up on us now, though, _that_ will be on you."

Kim looked up at Shego and said, "Sorry."

"Everyone's stressed," Shego said.

"I'm sorry for everything."

"Get us back to earth alive and you can consider yourself forgiven," Shego said in a softer voice.

Amy had already started looking through her box, and Kim pulled the next box in line off the shelf without even looking at the number. She figured the numbering scheme was simple. The first prisoner, put in cryo before the prison even existed, was Shego. The second was Amy. Kim herself was the third. She'd be 003-A.

When she opened the box all that was in it was her wristwatch.

"Too bad, Kimmie, looks like you're stuck with that fashion disaster," Shego said, gesturing at Kim's all white clothing. The expected sarcasm was there, but possibly also a bit of sympathy.

"Actually, I may have found some help," Kim said, hope returning to her voice.

"We've been here for centuries, what do you think that little-" Shego started.

The device chirped.

Kim hit one of the buttons and for a moment very small writing appeared on the watchface. "Spankin'," Kim said, then she hit one button twice.

"So what did you just do, princess?" Shego asked.

"I found out that my car is still online, and the AI is booting up. I told her to come here once all systems are online."

"You told you _car_ to come to the _moon_?" Surge asked.

"I've seen it," Blok said. "It does fly."

"And it could reach us on Mars if it needed to," Kim said.

"Except no one gassed it up in a very long time," Shego said.

"Jade doesn't run on gas," Kim said, "and she's been in a kind of mechanical stasis since GJ turned on me." Kim's voice turned dark, "Telling her to go into it and wait for me was the last thing I managed to do before GJ took me down." Then her voice returned to a more matter of fact tone: "Unless something very heavy fell on her Jade can get to us without difficulty."

"That's your plan?" Shego asked.

"No." Kim said. "That's my backup plan. The primary plan remains the same. We take whatever is useful from this room, get to the exit, and make our way to the lunar base."

The group again separated, everyone searching for their own belongings. Shego and Amy found spots to change into their own clothes. Kim randomly opened boxes and looked inside to see if she could find anything useful.

xxxxx

They could have searched the vault for ages, but none of them wanted to stay longer than they had to. It quickly became apparent that weapons and advanced technology had not been stored with other personal effects so the only truly useful items they found were things that had been overlooked, like Kim's watch.

When they left Surge was dressed in her own clothes, the t-shirt and jeans typical of a woman in her early twenties in 2018, and a long coat: a duster enhanced with nanotechnology to heat or cool its occupant and change color and texture. Currently she had it in pink suede.

Drakken was in his usual blue suit.

Amy was in her standard getup, this turtleneck two tone purple, but instead of her own glasses she'd found a pair that could shift to match her prescription, zoom, and show various non-visible spectra.

Shego hadn't located anything of particular use in any of the other boxes, but she surprised everyone but not changing into her jumpsuit but instead a simple tank top with green slacks.

Hawk took none of his own clothes, they were just what he had thrown on while fleeing Global Justice. He'd found a dress shirt and trousers that he deemed "passable".

Blok was wearing beat up jeans, a black tank top, and a red leather vest that honored his favorite fictional gang.

Horatio and Henry both wore unremarkable t-shirts and jeans, though Horatio's t-shirt seemed like it might be fitted for a woman. Henry had found a navigational wristband. It had a compass, had a GPS receiver, contained maps of the entire planet, and promised to be able to preform celestial navigation via stored star charts. All of it was useless when one wasn't on the earth, of course.

Newly equipped they all headed back to the guard station.

Kim returned to the console and started typing in commands, "I'm trying to channel oxygen out of the areas we're leaving and into the ones we'll be traveling through," she explained. "But there's not a lot to work with."

The trip to the airlock was uneventful. The space suits were in the locker like Kim had said. There were more than they needed and Shego scavenged extra oxygen canisters from the unnecessary ones.

"Once we're in the suits we need to keep our breathing even and take it slow," Kim said. "If there isn't transportation outside we'll need to walk two miles."

"Hop." Hawk said.

"What?" Kim asked.

"The low gravity combined with the loose regolith on the lunar surface makes walking difficult at best," Hawk said.

"It's hard enough to walk in here," Surge complained. They all knew it was true, not one of them hadn't had difficulty with pushing off the ground too hard.

"Astronauts found that the best way to move around is to hop," Hawk told everyone.

"Ok, if there's no transportation we'll need to hop a long way," Kim said. "It's important that we conserve our air if we're going to make it. Once the suits are on I recommend the only talking we do is to confirm that the suits are working. After that: silence."

When they were in the spacesuits and could hear each other only through the built in raidos Kim said, "Kim; suit secure."

"It works," Shego said.

"Drakken. Suit is working."

"Surge. I'm still breathing."

"Blok. I'm good."

"Hawk. I'm cool."

"Oh, the air tickles my nose," Amy said.

Shego rolled her eyes.

"Horatio; suit intact."

"Henry. I'm fine."

Shego looked at Kim then said, "Okay, we did roll call. Can we go now?"

"Everyone grab a spare tank," Kim said, then opened walked to the airlock.

The computer in the airlock had information the internal computers didn't.

"Damn, no transportation," Kim said. "Don't forget. Stay calm, breathe evenly, and we should be fine."

When everyone was piled into the airlock, Kim shut the interior door and opened the exterior door. It was their first glimpse of where they truly were.

The barren gray moonscape stretched in all directions. Kim oriented herself toward the other facility, but couldn't see anything but more moon.

She knew, intellectually, that it was because the horizon on the moon was closer, making the facility a half mile over the horizon instead of nearly a mile closer than the horizon as it would be on earth. She knew that. But it still felt hopeless to step out onto the moon's surface when she couldn't even see where she was going.


	3. Chapter 3: Moon Walk

Surge had no idea why some were making such a big deal about a two mile walk. She just wanted to be home and as far as she was concerned she could fly two miles if that was all it took. Even so, she'd studied Socrates in high school. She knew the importance of knowing that you don't know. She knew nothing about moon walks, so if people who knew more than she did were acting like the walk would be a big deal, she'd assume it would be a big deal.

She'd also stay silent about her lack of knowledge. There was no need to broadcast her ignorance.

It was when Blok, the one who had adapted the best to lunar gravity, fell right in front of her, almost immediately, that she began to understood how long of a way two miles could be.

x x x x

Blok stifled the urge to swear and watched moon's surface come up and hit him.

He'd taken into account the gravity, he'd adjusted to the need to push off the ground less hard, he'd reconciled the bizarre feeling of needing to fight inertia just as much to move things that now only weighed an eighth as much as he was used to. He simply hadn't been ready for the dust.

Moon dust, he discovered, really was dust. Not sand, certainly not soil, not like anything he'd walked on before. Fine powder created by the pulverizing impacts that had scarred the moon's surface.

He couldn't count on it to support the forces he was exerting on it just by walking lightly. It just... slipped out from under him.

x x x x

Hawk saw Blok go down and tried to remember his own advice: Don't walk; hop.

He managed to not fall and moved in the direction Kim was leading them.

x x x x

Shego smirked as Drakken and Amy joined Blok in the dust. It took a lot of effort, using muscles and training usually reserved for her acrobatic fights, but she managed to stay upright herself. As soon as she was clear of the facility she took a look around.

And promptly gasped.

x x x x

Henry was taking in the moonscape with awe. He barely noticed his three fallen comrades, and he certainly didn't notice Shego's gasp.

He'd dreamed of going to the moon. He'd always known it was impossible. Sure, if he worked hard, discovered hidden talents, and got very, very lucky he might have become an astronaut, but he didn't care about space. He was interested in setting foot on an alien planet. He followed the Mars probes with interest; he watched every documentary on the moon missions he could get his hands on. He'd heard of the view, the sense of wonder it caused, he knew the phrase "Magnificient Desolation", he'd looked at more pictures than most people ever would and poured over each as if it was the most important document in the world. It was all nothing compared to seeing it with his own eyes.

x x x x

Kim only paid attention to the three who fell enough to make sure that they weren't hurt and that they didn't damage their now-ancient suits. She was sure they'd all fall many times before they reached the base. She barely made note of the fact that someone gasped.

She was mostly trying not to think. She was trying to learn the necessary motions to move efficiently on the moon and then, she hoped, she could repeat them mindlessly, mechanically, until she arrived at the base. She worried that if she thought too much she might stop thinking she could do anything and start being overcome with doubt.

She was only broken out of her own thoughts when Shego said, "Kim," in a voice that, she thought, was a bit shaky.

"Shego," Kim said, "We need to conserve our air."

"Ok, fine," Shego said, not conserving air. "But, fearless leader, you wanna tell me what's wrong with that picture?"

Kim tried to stop, but just ended up falling forward. When she finally managed to get control of herself again she was covered in regolith and annoyed. She stood up and carefully turned toward Shego.

In addition to Amy, Blok, and Drakken, Henry and Surge now also showed signs of having fallen, though all were back on their feet. Shego was pointing, with her entire arm, to something in the sky.

Kim wasn't sure what could be worth looking at. With no atmosphere there was no weather, there was also no color. The sky was simply black. Lunar day wasn't darker than an earth day, if anything it was brighter, and so any starlight was impossible to discern. Their eyes simply weren't adjusted to pick up light so dim.

The sky should have been completely black, save for the sun, which Shego was not pointing toward.

When Kim did follow Shego's outstretched arm she realized that there was one celestial body in the sky she had completely forgotten to account for: Earth.

"Oh my God," Kim said when she found her voice.

x x x x

Hawk stared at the earth in the black sky. He couldn't make out any recognizable landmass. He wasn't even sure which end was north. But he did know that it was supposed to be a blue and green marble in the sky, not a mostly white one.

"It was not like that when I left it," he said.

x x x x

Henry looked at the object in the sky for a long time. The white from the poles stretched what seemed to be impossibly far. He guessed that only about a third of the earth remained uncovered.

After he heard Hawk speak, he said, "It wasn't like that when any of us left it," without really realizing he was speaking out loud.

As other members of the group turned to him, he added, "I was the last one taken," in a small voice. Then he asked, "Right?"

No one answered.

x x x x

Horatio finally bothered to pay attention to the topic of chatter, which he considered inherently wasteful as they had no idea how long the air in their 500 year old tanks would last and even less of an idea of how long it would take them to traverse the necessary distance given their—in his opinion, pathetic—progress so far, when he realized that it had stopped the eight other survivors from making any progress at all.

He stopped, which involved taking a tumble because he wasn't used to moving on the bare lunar surface any more than the rest of them, looked at the others, listened to their pointless prattle, and said, "Given the extinction of humanity, the current ice age hardly concerns us." He didn't even take notice as all attention abruptly turned his way. "There's more than enough space for us to live in the equatorial temperate zone."

He returned to hopping toward the unseen moon base that he hoped would be their salvation.

x x x x

Surge was the first to respond. It was a broken voice: a whimper that had wanted to be a shout. "Extinct?"

x x x x

Kim didn't fully process what Horatio had said until Surge repeated the main point: extinct. Kim didn't mean to shout. She didn't mean to sound hostile and antagonistic. She didn't even mean to speak. It just came out, "How could you possibly know that?"

Horatio's annoyed response of, "Weren't you the one who said we needed to conserve air?" did nothing to calm her down.

Her own response was lost in a chorus of other voices.

x x x x

Horatio was getting pissed off. Someone protested, "I was captured after you," Drakken and Shego were discussing the carrying capacity of Earth in its present state. Amy and Surge were busy convincing each other that an ice age, however severe, couldn't possibly wipe out humanity. The others were a cacophony.

When he couldn't take it any more he shouted, "AIR!"

That silenced the noise for a bit.

"We're using equipment that is five _centuries_ old, we don't even know if it's reading right. We have no idea when it might fail now that it's finally being put to use. None of us are exactly good at moon walking—hell, look at how little progress we've made so far," he pointed back to the prison which loomed disturbingly close. "Our best hope of survival is to shut up and keep on moving so we get to safety before anything has a chance to go wrong; you lot seem intent on standing still and bickering."

He made a point of putting more effort into hopping away.

x x x x

When Kim spoke it took everything she had to speak in a calm measured tone, but she did manage it. "How can you know the fate of humanity?" she asked.

"I'll tell you when we're somewhere with a better atmosphere," Horatio said, not pausing in his hopping toward the unseen base.

"Why not tell us now?" Shego asked. The tone of her voice made Kim crack a smile despite herself.

x x x x

Horatio sighed. He stopped which once again was inelegant and left him tumbling across the lunar surface. When he was still and standing he carefully pointed himself to the rest of the group and said, "Because I want to live."

He couldn't see their faces, he wasn't sure what they were thinking, but he had a feeling that that wouldn't satisfy them and he knew he couldn't survive alone. "Until I'm sure it won't get me killed, I'm not giving needless exposition."

That didn't satisfy the crowd either. Surge asked, "Is the human race really extinct?"

There was fear in her voice. That probably wasn't good. Horatio decided to try to offer some kind of hope. "Well," he said, "there's us now."

That failed to accomplish anything. There was more prattle.

Why couldn't they understand? Their suits had never been designed to last this long. For all they knew their air tanks were leaking. Outside of those suits was death incarnate in the form of concentrated _nothing_. They were standing at the edge of a precipice, a misstep could mean that they'd all die, and they were getting worked up over people who were already dead and long since buried—time and natural processes had seen to that.

Worse than all of that was the fact that he couldn't see where this was headed. He never liked relying on looking ahead, it felt strange and wrong, but at least it was there for him. But right now the situation was all wrong, and the time horizon too far. He had as little of an idea of what was coming as a mundane. It was … disturbing.

Since he was standing still he decided to try again. Still nothing of value. Well, almost nothing.

He interrupted the prattle by saying, "Kim-car inbound in two minutes."

x x x x

Shego was the one who finally put an end to discussion, "Tight-lipped grumpy-pants is right. We need to keep going regardless of what may, or may not, be going on on earth."

Shego started hopping toward the base, or at least in what she thought was in the right direction. Kim soon followed, and pretty soon they were all going.

x x x x

Surge had resumed the trek with the rest, but she obviously hadn't been silenced. "You can't just say something like, 'Humanity is gone,' and expect people not to react, you know," she said to Horatio.

Horatio said nothing but thought that not only could he do it, he did do it. It wasn't his fault the others overreacted to the news.

"Now that we're moving, like you wanted," Surge continued, "could you at least tell us how you know? Or how you think you-"

Horatio looked ahead again and said, "Kim-car in thirty seconds."

Before more words were spoken, the car was visible on the horizon and, just as he had predicted, it arrived at their location thirty seconds from when he spoke.

x x x x

"It's Jade! She made it," Kim all but shouted as the small purple coupe landed on the lunar surface beside her. Fine regolith was kicked up by the landing, and the way it failed to form into clouds again hammered home the fact that outside of her ancient space suit was vacuum. Kim had seen the car land too many times to count, on all manner of surface, and it never looked quite like that.

"How is this even possible?" Surge asked.

"Check the name," Kim told her with a smugness she hadn't felt in quite some time. "Jade, do you hear me?" Kim asked the car.

"... have your frequency now, Kimberly," the AI's almost-human sounding voice came over Kim's radio. "Where have you been? My internal chronometer-"

"Should say that it's the two thousand five hundred twenty ninth year Anno Domini, or thereabouts," Horatio cut in, sounding somewhat bored. Kim decided she wasn't even going to try to understand him.

"Did you detect any life—any human life on your way here?" Kim asked.

"Waste of air," Horatio said.

"I was in Japan," Jade said. "There was nothing in my immediate vicinity. I didn't scan beyond that. I came straight to you."

"You did the right thing," Kim told Jade. She knew that the AI attempted to learn from mistakes, and she didn't want it learning that unrelated fact finding was more important than coming when called, especially given that the type of call she used was one that she generally reserved for emergencies.

"So, what now?" Shego asked. "Miracle car or no, we're still on the moon, princess. I don't think that thing can carry all of us."

"No," Kim said. "But it can get me to the base faster than walking. You guys keep headed in the right direction." She looked into the car, used an electronic map on the dash to orient herself, then pointed to show which direction that was. She felt pretty good about the fact that it was almost exactly the direction they had been going. Even without the correction they'd have made it to their destination.

"I'll go see if I can find anything that can be used to carry all of you over," she said as she got into the car.

"What if you run into trouble," Drakken asked. "Shouldn't you have some backup?"

Drakken being concerned for her well being was almost too surreal for Kim to take, but she managed to answer levelly, "I'll be fine. Jade is more than a match for anything we might meet."

"You hope," Shego said. "Just don't pause to sight-see."

Kim smiled, closed the door without comment, and the car rose and flew away.

x x x x

Surge watched as the seemingly impossible car disappeared over the horizon and a sinking feeling overtook her. "She won't leave us … will she?"

Drakken laughed. It was the first time Surge had heard anyone laugh since she woke up. Then Drakken explained, "There is one thing you can count on, and that is: Kim Possible will always do what's right."

"Isn't she the one that froze us?" Surge asked, not bothering to hide the bitterness in her voice.

x x x x

Horatio didn't even bother to look ahead. "She'll be back," he said. His concern was no less die than Surge's had been, and he voiced it, after a fashion, "If we conserve our air we might even live to see it."

Everyone fell mercifully silent as they resumed their trek.

x x x x

Surge grew to hate the silence. She was full of questions and getting no answers. With nothing but the sound of other people breathing she was forced to concentrate on hopping toward their destination. All eight of them fell. A lot. Horatio's reminder that the suits they were doing the falling in were five hundred years old did nothing for her peace of mind.

Finally she asked, "If there's no one else left then what's the point?"

Shego said, "The point is to live." After a pause she added, "Besides, he still hasn't said what he's basing his outlandish claim on. So ignore him."

Surge couldn't ignore him. For whatever reason, she believed Horatio. "If humanity ends with us, what does it matter if we die here or on earth?"

"It matters to _me_," Shego said, "whether _I_ die today or decades from now."

"I understand," Surge said, "It's just-"

"There's us now," Horatio said. "Humanity doesn't have to end."

"I hope you're not talking about some kind of breeding program," Shego said angrily.

Horatio stopped. Surge was getting used to Horatio's inability to stop with anything resembling grace, so it didn't surprise her when he ended up tumbling forward. What did surprise her was that he didn't seem to be making any effort to halt the tumbling. When it ended on its own he got up slowly and faced Shego. Surge couldn't see his face and the space suit made it difficult to read body language, but the impression she was getting was utter, horrified, shock. So much so it overcame the inexpressiveness of the space suit.

Hawk asked, "You ok?" but other than that everyone was silent.

Finally Surge asked, "Well what did you mean?" No response. "How are the nine of us supposed to revive humanity?"

When he responded his voice was quiet, "The technology exists to repopulate the species without anyone needing to get pregnant if they don't want to." He paused a beat. "Without anyone needing to get pregnant at all." There was a larger pause. "If we ever reached the point where we forced people to," he sputtered, "to... to … you know, in order to save the species then it would be better if we let humanity die."

There was another silence.

"The idea that we'd do otherwise is horrific," Horatio added. Then he resumed his hopping.

x x x x

Blok wanted to break the uneasy silence that followed, but he wasn't sure how. Finally he said, "It wouldn't work anyway, nine people isn't enough genetic variation to perpetuate a species."

"Actually," Horatio said, for the first time sounding like he was actually interested in talking, "The Laysan duck hit a low point of an effective population of seven and it was on the way back when I was taken."

Blok was pleased when this started a conversation about genetics that lacked doom, gloom, and horror.


End file.
